Call of Cthulhu Wild West - finally living the Dream

 

I've run three major Call of Cthulhu campaigns Since I was a teen. Two set in 1930's Los Angeles, and two in 1930's New York. Ah, memories. that last one was about 10 years ago for my long running Santa Monica group. I ran a lot of 1st ed over those years, but also managed to get in campaigns (of various lengths) of a bunch of genres. White Box DnD, Metamorphosis Alpha, Runequest, Traveller. But that Cthulhu one, though only maybe a dozen sessions in length, was fun. I called it Fangs of New York, and the first session was set in a Times Square upper story banquet hall at a new years eve party. 

I recall though having fun with that little campaign, but even at that time I was sort of pining to run the system in other time periods. Ancient Rome, Ancient Sumer, maybe even the Old West.  I felt like I had my fill of the 20's-30's. 

Up until the recent holiday season I had a decent 5th ed DnD group going. A fun bunch. Everybody was from off the Roll20 forums, and by this time I had learned to vet prospective players. Heavily. There is a lot of chaff to shift through to find the goods. And everybody was very cool. The most fun for me was a young couple, maybe in their early 20's, who were very enthusiastic noobs and I had a lot of laughs with them. But of course if you have a couple in your group, you aren't just getting somebody who might leave the group for whatever reason. You are typically losing TWO. That is the nature of a couple. They usually want to play together. But whatever is going on with them, we have not heard from that besides one chime in last month saying the wanted to play one night, but it has been silent since. The way I figure it, the thing young couples do best is break up. So my assumption is there. 

As it was the holidays, I called a few weeks break mid-December. I had not taken vacation time from my job for months, and wanted to use some of it. 

By the time New Years Eve came around, I had gotten the notion to try and get a Western themed Cthulhu thing going. It just popped into my head. Hey, if the DnD campaign is done, I want to jump right into something else. 

 I tested the waters with a post in the Roll20 forums, and just like my expectations told me I did not get much reply. I tried a few spots in other places, and eventually was lucky enough to stumble upon a Call of Cthulhu Facebook page with a huge membership. My post there got a huge response. 

I did not vet that hard. This was a niche genre, but plenty of people were interested. I actually had to choose several from a dozen or so inquiries. I had a couple of shortish Discord chats. The only one who did not continue by the night of the first game was a guy who wanted to run a Paleontologist. He had been running Cthulhu for years, but not in the format I wanted to do it. He wanted to play with Zoom, with video, and with theater of the mind. Well, in face to face or online I use battle maps, mini's/tokens, and Discord for voice. And everybody else I chose were into it. 

Ultimately, I ended up with mostly folk from the FB page who had played CoC, and also some of the remnants from the D&D group. 

So three easy going sessions so far. I mean, this is not DnD, and it has been years since I ran CoC. So I had to get more into a narrative style. Not relying on constant combats. Though I had to look for balance. Unlike my usual old campaigns of CoC, this was a more violent environment, and almost every character had guns. I set this campaign in 1886 Washoe County, that includes Reno, Carson City, and Virginia City. Towards the end of the gold rush in the west, and towards the end of what could be called The Old West in general. I mostly picked the time because most western weapons and tropes were around, and also because it was the year the University of Nevada opened in Reno. 

So far the characters are A female Doctor, a teenage female Chinese carnival trick shooter (both from San Franciso just hours away by train; and of course I'll want some adveturing there eventually), a two-fisted banker (from Virgina City who has survived dozens of robbery attempts), A writer based on Beauchamp from the movie Unforgiven (Duck of Death sez I), and former nun turned entertainer/dancer. 

Jordan, from the DnD campaign, has been on a long Canada trip so has yet to make it. Not even sure what he would run. For both of the guys from the DnD, they were kind of noobish to DnD, so for sure had zero CoC experience. They were not very interested until they heard I would be doing old western theme, and also they saw it was an easy peezy system, so they were in. 

So yeah, so far so good. So far just sort of settling into their lives in Reno, and encounters with cultishness related to Yig (losta snakes!), and Yidhra. 

I was at some game shop many years ago reading through one of the books and saw her entry and was fascinated ever since. She was for sure not a Lovecraft invention.

"...where Yidhra walks, the hills do not forget"

So yeah, as a believer in positive visualization I finally get to not just use this Outer God, but in a Western Cthulhu game. Boxes checked! I hope this campaign goes awhile!

Cheers

Gaming Inspiration out in the wild 2

 

Gaming inspiration is where you find it. Last year after a lovely, almost spiritual weekend in the deep Mendocino woodlands I posted about the moments where my mind went to games that take place in natural places. 

Now to do it again. After a long year at work in my healthcare related job (mostly hybrid so work from home, hold the applause) and not taking much time off from it, early this month I drove the several hours to Mendocino. Not to the woods, but not far from it. Some of my oldest friends and some of their Bay Area music friends, couple dozen in all, rented an old 1800's farmhouse (in great condition) right near the stunning sea cliffs and coves of Casper, California; pretty much Mendocino.

I made it an extra-long weekend. Leaving on a Thursday even though we had the house until Monday morn. I spent Thursday night in a small hippy town called Willits ("Gateway to the Redwoods"), in a quiet hotel where both that afternoon and the next morning had the sauna all to myself.

With the area being cold and misty, the town itself surrounded by woods, it was a great way to relax and prepare for an extended party in a house chock full of musicians.

I'm so grateful to still be a part of a scene where once a year or so I get invited to these terrific and exclusive weekends. At least once a year. And for this one I got to the property first and got to check out the house.

nice Night of the Living Dead vibe

There is something very cool about being their first and watching folk roll in and greeting them, beers and other drinks getting handed around (we had to wait a while for the cleaning ladies to get the place ready for us). 

But before long the party was in full swing. Rooms assigned (I got my own little love room), friends hugged, and more drinks. Great conversations and catch ups, big laughs, and eventually full-on music sessions. 

To many little weekend misadventures to be included here, but on Sunday early afternoon I did a little solo walk to the seacliffs. And of course with some alone time and such great views, some gaming ideas came to mind.

What a great location for characters to explore sea caves. I'm even thinking of having the characters in my upcoming western themed Call of Cthulhu campaign, located in the Pacific Northwest, visit this area. Deep Ones no doubt need to be included!

But yeah, another great vacation weekend out in nature and filled with friends and music. Something like this seems to becoming a yearly think. I don't want to make time fly by, but cannot wait to find out where we will do it next!

Cheers!

So Lamentations of the Flame Princess had a PDF Sale

 I cannot think of a single PDF item related to gaming that I have ever paid money for. I have a small collection of items I found online that cost me nothing. I think over the years most were from The Trove website (does it still exist?) which I suppose can be considered piracy, matey. But most are very old. And mostly Judges Guild items from back in the day that I actually owned at some point in my youth, but are gone for whatever reason. Wilderlands sourcebook, Modron, etc. 

I always preferred to have a physical book on hand, and mostly still do. But in this day of the iPads, I can read a PDF without sitting at a computer. That's big. 

So, I don't have much experience with LOTFP products. Or James Raggi himself. Early in the OSR I remember seeing him post on his website a flyer he was hanging around his town looking for players. It had the image of a female thief at a treasure chest. I thought I saw it recently, but can't find it. But since at the time I was looking for players around 2008 I contacted him to ask about the flyer and if he had luck with it. He gave a friendly reply, and that was the only interaction I had with him. Lately I considered reaching out to ask about the expat experience, since I was considering getting the hell out of this fucked up country. 

It was not long before he had a business, mired in a certain amount of controversy. "Weird Fantasy" products. Cover images of female adventurers losing limbs to ochre jellies and such. But hey, to me all D&D was weird, so I never really looked into his stuff. A lot of the scuttlebutt was about shit monsters and character penis's getting turned into eels, etc. Stuff that was not exactly the call to adventure for me. But I will admit I always had some curiosity. 

I promised myself to spend no more than 15 bucks. Not because I'm broke. That's like 20 minutes pay for me. But because I did not want to get saddled with a bunch of PDF's I mostly won't use. Again, this was about curiosity, though I hope there are things I can use throughout. I went over a bit, and here is what my 16.50 got me.

Veins of the Earth: I found Deep Carbon to be interesting (though I had to change a lot to make it usable for me. For a Star Wars session no less). So I wanted to check this out. I'll do anything to make the stale old underdark more interesting.
Curse of the Daughterbrides: Sound like a father marrying his daughters. Curiosity killed me on this one.
Terror in the Streets: sounds like an urban adventure, so what the heck. Hopefully mine it for bits.
Frostbitten & Mutilated : like other Zak things I got, pure curiosity.
Fish Fuckers: Sounds like humans raping Deep Ones for a change. Pure curiosity. Maybe useful for Cthulhu games?
No Rest for the Wicked: heard somewhere it sucks. So spent a buck fitty to find out why.
A Red & Pleasant Land: I doubt I will get much use out of a setting about Dracula and Alice in Wonderland, but I just gotta find out what the hype is about. Erik Tenkar calls it Zak's masterpiece.
World of the Lost: the cover sold me.
Vornheim: Again, gotta see the hype.
The God that Crawls: Heard it was good.
Tower of the Stargazer: can always use a wizards tower.
Isle of the Unknown: heard good things. Heard bad things. But maybe has a lot of things to mine.
Death Frost Doom: The Lichway from White Dwarf is a fave I have used several times over the decades, and I heard this ripped it off. So gotta have a look.  OK, so there were some I knew well of but just decided not to get. There is Carcosa, which seems more or less a complete setting. I could tell over the years that I could not probably mine much ideas from it. But now that I think of it I should have just got it for a read. I think it is still on sale.  I may go in and see if there was an item or two I missed and want to add to my new collection.  I'll say this. I don't mind supporting Raggi. He does not seem like a bad guy. Not long ago on the Tenkar Discord I made fun of his comments about "why bother cleaning the toilet?"and got a chorus of Tenkars apparently high attendance of mentally ill people piping up about picking on those with mental issues. I just thought he might be a slob, not necessarily bonkers. But really, I can respect what he is doing...in gaming, not bathroom hygiene.   Cheers

"Official" D&D vs "Folk"D&D and the pitfalls of playing with strangers

(this post may qualify as a rant. Take it with a grain of salt)

 I've recently been seeing a bit of this lately, the use of the term "Folk" over the usual "Old School" designation.

"Official" is of course the rules (more or less) as written, while "Folk" is a name for people who rely less on whatever the current editions and settings are, and "do what thou whilst" hodgepodge gaming. I like the word Folk for this. The term "Old School" is getting, well, a little old. 

As a D&D person myself, this is sort of hypocritical I guess, but I find gamers, D&D players especially to often be an odd lot. I suppose I always considered myself Old School, but maybe less so in recent years. When I got hipped to the OSR (sometimes derogatively referred to as the "blOwSR") around 2009 or so, I got involved a bit. I started this blog not long after starting a 10-year group where I ran a variety of genres, but mostly 1st edition. I'd say about 60% of that experience was great, and the rest, well, often when more or less unfulfilling, and often the drizzling shits. I feel this is because it was gaming mostly with strangers. Sometimes weird ones. And I found this to my experience with the modern crop of players, especially gained on Roll20 forums. Maybe chock full of more oddballs than Grognard places like Dragonsfoot. 

Most of my gaming life since I was a teen was about me running campaigns, of various genres, for friends I already had. People who often had no real D&D experience. They came in fresh, and just wanted to enjoy the play without a bunch of expectations. Open minded. In any genre I ran. And these were my most happy gaming years. Dungeons and Dragons, Champions, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Traveller. Kind of a bummer that this was 20 years and more ago. 

As a teen I knew that playing at game shops or cons was not for me. So many of the people turned me off. 

So as far as 1st ed D&D was concerned, there was no arguing over rules or rulings, whereas in the groups of strangers that I ran for years later that was often the order of the day. So much of 1st was open to interpretation, it was an easy in for power gamers and rules lawyers to work their shitty magic. People who if you gave in to, would, like classic bullies, feel they could do more of it until you were worn down. They were so proud of how they viewed how things should be run.  It was one reason I treasured doing games like Champions or Call of Cthulhu. The rules were fairly clear. But eventually it would be back to D&D and "D&D People" and their particular peccadillos. It was often hard to feel like these people were friends.

When I moved to a new state it was a chance to sort of renew. I adopted 5th edition and had a couple of decent face to face campaigns, the first one was me being tapped to DM by my current beloved besties B and L. I was happy to more or less be turning my back on my old school roots. But my experiences going mostly online with Roll20 the other year was also decidedly mixed. It was mostly with strangers. Because of this I decided to hew close to the rules, but still, no matter the experience or age range, D&D players still seemed to have particular expectations, rather than just going with the flow of whatever the DM had in mind. 

 So, call them old school or new school, call them official or folk. The only main difference to me is that one wants rules as written, and the other ones want something more creative and distinct. But they still often seem to be odd people (yes, I am very much generalizing) with particular expectations. Such as "I want to run a cyborg minotaur gunslinger!" People under 40 on Roll20 are full of this kind of "hey, look at my cool character!"

But even if I stick with 5th ed, it will soon be a "folk" edition. One DnD is going to change everything. WOTC recently and very blatantly announced that the players are an untapped resource to be monetized, so part of their plan is microtransactions that themselves are well known as the drizzling shits of the video game industry. To play it is no longer the DM's who will need written material. Players will need to create online minis for their characters, and I can see a couple of dozen microtransactions for every aspect of it. Face, hair, clothing, every weapon or piece of armor. The colors. What the cost of this stuff will be is what interests me the most. In the past you could buy some paints for about 10 bucks, and a mini for about 5. Will your online mini cost you 30 bucks? 50?

But that is going in a direction that I am not at all interested in otherwise. 

Mostly it turns me off as there will be a lot more work for DM's, and likely a lot more costly for them. They will need to invest a small fortune in DND Beyond, as will the players. And as usual, you will be dealing with fickle players you often do not know along with the cost and time investments. For me, based on my hit or miss Roll20 experiences with the community at large, will it be worth it?

Nah, I will stick with Roll20 and 5th ed for now. Or maybe just try to get a campaign of Call of Cthulhu or a Superhero thing going. A break from D&D people. I think I am maybe starting to head towards being done doing RPG's with non-friends. I have a campaign of infrequent games I run for my local besties B and L, and my old player Terry, which is just great because it is just like those games of old for my friends. No weird expectations. Just D&D. A D&D game once or twice a month with true friends, with my favorite video games in between (this was a super banner year for video game), is starting to seem just right to me. I'm really kind of fed up dealing with strangers in gaming. 

So yeah, this will now be old school or "folk" gameplay for me. Until WOTC buys up Roll20 and other platforms and it is no longer supported. The time is maybe coming when if you don't want to invest in the official stuff, it will have to go back to face to face tabletop. Somewhere you don't need WOTC or their bullshit. That will be the true Folk RPGing. 

Maybe unfortunate for me, as I still feel I want to be retired from face to face. I have boardgames for that.

YMMV

Cheers

 much of 

The True Enemy of Game Groups - Attrition

 

Player attrition. It happens. It happens to all of us who put a group together. No matter how long it lasts, it will eventually fall apart, either by losing players faster than they can be replaced, or the GM moves on and nobody else wants to take the mantle. 

It can start slow. A player or two has life events that make them busier. They still clearly want to be a part of things. But missing every 4th game will usually lead to missing one out of three, and soon its "sorry, I just can't play on a regular basis anymore because this and that."

Or maybe they just out and out have to quite without a slow bleed out. Its extra tragic when its one of your best players. 

Back in my teens and 20's we seemed to have long campaigns that saw little in the way of lost players. Mostly it was friends I was playing with though. This was most of my experience from childhood up until the late 90's. I played with friends I already had. That is what usually made up my groups. We played as friends. We had long campaigns that at some point just fell apart fast because two or more of us were getting hit by life stuff. Though it often started as only being able to play one day a month. Then longer and longer between games. Momentum loss is a great foe of regular groups. Go a couple of months without a game and that group is likely through. Though I should say that by the late 90's some campaigns I had with regular life friends might seem done for, then after 3 or 4 months a long since flaking friend who kind of helped slow things down will be all "hey, when are we going to play D&D/Call of Cthulhu/Champions again?" Uh..whenever you are available.

And even that is all good, really. In that case above I was indeed having infrequent games with about 3-4 players at the time, but those games were 6-8 hour affairs that let me throw in everything and the kitchen sink in that one day. Hell, in those long D&D games a character might level up twice in that single day. But that too finally had to end. And it was the last time I would have a group made up of real life, long time friends. 

So in later adulthood, well into the 2000's, it was less groups of my friends and it became maybe one longtime friend, and a handful of strangers. It was not just a huge dynamic shift in general, but now it was folks who were devoting time to strangers, away from their usual life. After decades in the workforce, and relationships/marriages, people just place more of a value on their leisure time. Often not even in a hugely conscious way. But there are important things in life. Sure, go to a forum like Dragonsfoot.net and you'll find a bunch of older people who seem to want D&D to be the be all and end all of life. But for most folk hitting or going beyond middle age free time gets sucked dry by a million things other than tabletop gaming. I'm personally not ready to retire from my professional life; and even if I did I'm not sure how much of that I would want to be spent on tabletop. 

Yeah. This. 

My longest group went from around 2009 to 2019, but that group saw a lot of players coming and going. The entire time the long-time host was always there, then there was my long time friend "T," and then players who stuck around for a couple years, and those that played for some months before a life thing got in the way. That dynamic kind of worked for me. There were enough people who stuck around here and there that lead to nice year long multi-genre campaigns with 4-5 players. That all ended when I moved out of my native city, though I often think about how I was fairly burnt out towards the end. For me running campaigns on a weeknight, running out of work at a fairly professional job and driving 15 minutes in rush hour traffic, wore me down. Getting to the hosts house, eating fast food as I drove, then slamming a couple beers and puffing a doob to get the day shrugged off so I could get into a fantasy mood wasn't all that conducive to a peaceful DM persona. All that week in and week out made me fairly easily annoyed by dumb player things during a game. And an annoyed DM is the last thing a party wants. 

In my new town I ran for a new group, started by my soon to be local besties (B and L, a younger couple who kind of adopted lonely old me because I didn't know anybody in town. I bring them up in every boardgame post I make because I mostly play with them and sometimes a couple others). But after several months they decided to take up a somewhat nomadic existence that only had them in town a few short months of the year and that group fell apart (I didn't mind, one of the other players, a female no less, was a cheat and I think on opiates or something). 

I then discovered Roll20 and did around a 12 game campaign with Los Angeles Bestie "T" and a couple of folks I met in the local game shop Facebook page (it was a couple games before I learned one of them worked at the same hospital I did). It was going really well, but one of the guys had a new baby that was taking up a lot of time, and the other guy was going back to school. They would still be able to play now and again, but with the precious momentum going the way of the dodo I more or less nixed things. 

Most recently, for a few months last year, I was tapped by yet another local couple, plus a couple other folk they found on local meetups. We had several games, and things were sailing along and all seemed to be having fun, but then the male host messaged us saying that his elderly mother had been found to have a severe illness and were having to move her in. We were going to be starting up again when the mom got settled in, but it has been awhile now so that may not be back.  

I certainly have long since learned to manage my expectations with game group longevity. And to be honest, I love to GM games, and often get into a zone where the hours just fly by. But it can also be a bit of a hassle, even with long since losing my habit of putting hours into game prep. Setting things up then being the center of attention for three or more hours has lost a certain amount of its luster. 

I forgot the battlemat..

So, with no current RPG group, and most of my boardgame pals out of town for months now, I think I'll be settling in for a Spring where the majority of my gaming will be on my XBOX. Grand Theft Auto 5, Elder Scrolls Online, and some other games new and old (Jedi Fallen Order, Dead Rising). It can be super relaxing to just let yourself get immersed in those worlds. Don't have to go anywhere. Don't have to set anything up. Don't have to worry about being down a player and cancelled sessions. Nothing to do but work on my carpel tunnel and zap my eyeballs from sitting too close to the big screen. 

But then again, I'll be chomping at the bit to run games before long. And even if something doesn't come up locally, "B and L" want to check out Roll20 gaming when they settle into where they are going for the summer (to manage a high-end RV park halfway across the country). If they got the internet for it, LA pal "T" will want to jump in, and the gaming will be on again. And the highway of gaming will be as it always has been, for me anyway. On again. Off again. On again. Off again. 

Player Appreciation and Beyond

 

(note: for most of my gaming life my groups were made up of friends I already had. This post is about experiences with mostly strangers that made up a new group)

I've probably mentioned in a lot of my posts over the years that my main pet peeve as a GM was to feel like running a game was a job that didn't pay. It has been a few years since I actually felt that way. But during my 10 years run for a group in Santa Monica (my first group that was mostly made up of strangers) from around 2008 to 2018 I felt like that fairly often. Now, it's not a TOTAL buzzkill. Sometimes it was even fun. At first. Kind of "pretend player vs. DM." One of the long-time players was a guy we called The Power Game man. A big white South African guy, he would create a character that seemed interesting and layered, and you would soon realize he was just min-maxing. Using stats, race, and class in combination to create especially powerful characters. 

Now on the face of it that isn't so bad. That is kind of baked into current D&D.  Lots of players do it, and it's part of their process. It's part of their fun. But where I get frustrated is when that kind of play treads on not just the other players fun, but especially mine. A couple of these "power game types" came along during that group's existence. And don't get me started on our long-time host then, who was not just a min maxer to a degree, but also one of these guys who liked to live vicariously through his characters getting laid and seemed to think I was his PC's pimp. So while Power Game Man was busy treating every NPC as an enemy (a power gamer trait I have always noticed), the host was always trying to fuck them. 

Look Andy, I'm not going to role-play the
process out for you; just roll your charisma
and we'll leave it at that...

As a DM you are in a unique situation where you have the power to pretty much come up with a sneaky way to kill any character that bothers you. But I was never like that. I was never an "enemy" DM who was out to get characters. Quite the opposite. I was fair to a fault, even in my earliest childhood games. And the worst players, like Power Game Man and some others, could tell that and use it as an advantage. And Therin is where the worst of my frustrations come in. I don't usually have some well-crafted story written up, or a way things have to go in game in order for me to have fun with it. I just try to make it a fair and interesting setting for the characters to romp around in and look for hooks. If I get into a players vs. DM situation, its because I got dragged into it. I'm not really into that mess and I resent it when I feel I've been put in that situation. I just want us to all have fun together.

I may complain (a lot), but I can see silver linings on any cloud. In the case of our old host, though in a lot of ways he was a pain, he was very supportive of my desire to run things other than D&D. It was in large part due to his support that I had successful campaigns of Champions, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, and even Metamorphosis Alpha. I will always be grateful for that.  Power Game man? Naw, I have nothing to be grateful for there. Just an ass in a seat at best. 

But hell, for any player at my table who isn't a total annoying wack job, I'm grateful for them giving their time and putting their gaming fun in my hands. But every now and again I have to appreciate the players who, without even trying, seem to value what you are doing as a DM, and in turn are valuable themselves. 

So I'll mention two "points of light" in my player pools. First is my old Friend "T." She has been in a majority of my gaming groups since the early 90's. She doesn't exactly go out of her way to make my experience better. But her mellow and consistent play style jibes well with my styles. She just...plays her characters. There isn't a power gamer bone in her body. Oh sure, she wants strong characters. But its usually just enjoying the life path that unfolds for her many characters in my campaigns that motivates her. She accepts the good and the bad that happens in the game. She is patient as hell. She gets along with other players. She quietly and steadily just role plays her characters. Even the very infrequent evil character she runs isn't a pain in the ass. But she is the anti-power gamer. In my Night Below campaign years ago her fighter character got a wish from a Deck of Many Things. Of all the things she could have wished for, she wished for an NPC her character fancied to propose marriage to her! Some would call that a wasted wish, but that was her just role-playing her character. Outstanding. T still lives in my old town, but we get to play here and there through Roll20, and she remains reliable and dependable player. 

In most recent times there is "B and L," who I mention a lot in my board game postings. Its thanks to them I got my first group together in my new town. L had no experience with gaming, but B played 1st Ed. in the service (D&D in Afghanistan, ya'll!). They were looking for a DM through the local shops Facebook page, and we hit it off right away. They are not the most outgoing players, they certainly are not there for community theater. But I specialize in somewhat introverted players, and they have come out of that shell pretty well. Quiet players much like "T," but they come up with some interesting moments. L, a woman straight as the day is long, had her female half orc fighter end up in a same sex relationship with an NPC. It was a situation that I certainly did not push, but the fact that it happened organically in the course of the games points very much to a role-playing frame of mind. 

Anyway, not just getting me as a DM and putting a group together, B and L would bring me a six pack of expensive beer or ale every damn game just for me. Even now, a couple of years later when we have a board game day, they bring me the same. Even during the times they are on health kicks and not drinking. I'd be like "look guys, if you aren't even drinking its not right to being me drinks." But deaf ears. Any time they come over they bring it to me. And me being raised on not showing up at a house with empty hands means I very much appreciate it. Its not the main reason we became so close so quickly (I'd take a bullet for them, meanwhile my oldest friends I've known for decades can go take their own bullets). That is mainly because this younger couple sort of adopted me at a time I didn't know anybody in my new town. Had me over for Xmas day only knowing me a brief time, when I would otherwise probably have spent it watching TV and eating Jack in the Box tacos (or maybe in a casino). I have been in a couple of relationships (with non-gamers) since coming to town, but most of my time with B and L is just me and them (and sometimes with some of their local pals). Dinner, drinks, local theater..I love being a third wheel with them. 

Now, you aren't always going to get close to people you met through gaming. As a matter of fact, they are the only case where it happened to me. We are already like brothers and sister. I appreciate the hell out of them in games or otherwise. They are my besties. And as I get older, in gaming or otherwise, I try more and more to focus away from the pain-in-the-ass players (or whoever) of the past, and put more of it, more positivity, into those who truly deserve it. People being positive towards you should make you want to be a better person. For them and for yourself. 

But we should all go through life doing that.

 

Voices and sound FX part 2 - Sci Fi etc.

 In the last post I bleeped and blooped about occasional amateur voice "acting" in D&D games. I wanted to follow-up with a short post on my somewhat minimal experience with Roll20 and its Jukebox function. But because a comment was left mentioning Sci Fi games I thought I'd touch on that a bit (who would have thought I'd get multiple posts out of this daffy subject).

"Going to the well one too many times"
as a wise man (probably) once said. 

I think there is something about D&D, no matter how you approach it as a DM, that lends itself to be a bit silly with the sounds of things happening in game (see the Don Martin examples that I have cherished for most of my life in my last post). As I've mentioned before I'm sure most of the anti-community theater in games folk have at least done a "thunk" as an arrow hits a body, and a "splurt" as it's pulled out.

 I mean, in most games but especially D&D there is a certain humorous irony that lurks around every corner. Behind every door. The whimsical nature of the game along with the various actions of players and the consequences of such as dictated by random number generation leads to a certain amount of suspense mixed with surprise, a great recipe for laughs. So the "spladaps" and "sizafitz's" just kind of grooves along with that. How often do we enter a session with a mind towards seriousness, and it devolves into slapstick? 

Don't even ask me to bring up that one Toon session so long ago. The voices. We all...did...voices. 😬

I ran Champions (or very early on Superhero 2044 and Supergame as a literal kid) on and off for decades, and you know the deal there. With superpowers it's kind of a no brainer; fire blast ("swoosh"), lasers ("zark!), explosions ("booosh!"). But Nothing all that silly. Uh, unless you aren't a comic book nerd, and do consider those examples silly.  Where it got real dorky was when characters with powers similar to famous characters described their stuff with those familiar sounds. Hence "snikt," "bamf" and "thwip." But hey, if it made them enjoy things more I would not complain (out loud). 

Call of Cthulhu? Ran great, long campaigns (and one or two short ones) on and off for decades. I probably voiced some scary moan, the rattling around of a skeleton in a basement before the party sees it, maybe a gurgling sound for any number of things. But really, I was pretty much about the verbal description of the dark goings-on. Trying to give voice to, say, Wilbur Watley's brother would probably just elicit laughs, which is great for D&D but not so much for CoC. 

 I laugh so I won't cry.

Let's see. What else? Well, I did a classic Traveller campaign a few short years ago, dipping into the original rules set. Not a lot of meat on that bone to go all Michael Winslow from Spaceballs. 

Ship to ship combat was silent, though somebody probably imitated various guns during firefights. But since they weren't "blasters" it would be your basic rifle or machine gun thing. "Pow pow" is so just banal. But I relied on appropriate music cue's more than anything (with CD's, so I was slapping them in and out of the player like a Free Trader computer operator would be slapping computer "tapes" in and out of the computer tower). Classical music, the 1984 Dune movie soundtrack, The Sci Fi Channel Children of Dune soundtrack, etc. 

I mean, have the right music on for a ship battle, or a Free Trader bravely skimming a gas giant, and you don't need to make cutesy sounds. 

This is Free Trader Beowulf...
mayday, mayday...iiiiiiieeeeee!!! Skidooooosh!!!

The moral of this tale is that in D&D you can't really go wrong going overboard in D&D with this stuff, but in many other games it's like wasabi. A little goes a long way. 

Eric Bischoff's SARSA method - for gaming

 

Eric Bischoff is a television producer and wrestling announcer who worked for a couple of wrestling organizations until ending up doing similar work for Ted Turners WCW promotion in the early 90's. He eventually caught Ted Turner's attention, and was named CEO of WCW over many more seasoned candidates. This happened for a variety of reasons, but the main one was Turner's fondness for Bischoff's "gumption." Eric was coming in with, at the time, off the wall ideas, including putting WCW's new television show on opposite Vince McMahon's WWE (at the time the WWF). This was a batshit move, as WCW had not turned a profit for years. It was a vanity project of Ted's, but WWE was the 800 lb. gorilla in the room.

It as not long before the profits started coming in. Eric's ideas were new in wrestling, a format that still had its feet in an old school mindset that shouted out that change was bad for the industry. Besides the Monday night move, he masterminded the New World Order storyline and Hulk Hogan's shocking "heel" (bad guy) turn. The attention from this shot the ratings up and WCW, the red headed step child of major wrestling organizations, at one point beat WWE in rating for 83 consecutive weeks. So much pressure was put on WWE that story has it Vince McMahon had the water coolers removed from the Titan Sports offices for budgetary reasons. 

I would never say I was ever a fanatic wrestling fan. I watched a couple years in the 80's, and was a huge Hulk Hogan mark. Then I showed little interest until the mid 90's, when Bischoff's moves were getting people talking. This late 90's "Monday Night Wars" period is really the only era I'm still a big fan of. I don't watch much wrestling these days, but I listen to several podcasts by personalities from the time period. Bischoff, Jim Ross, Bruce Prichard, Stone Cold. And years ago I read a few biographies, including Bischoff's Controversy Creates Cash.

In one part of the book Eric talks about the SARSA method, his outline for putting together wrestling angles and storylines. 

“As I felt more and more comfortable and especially in ’96 when I got a lot more involved and around the same time, I focused on a formula that was born out of a newspaper article that I read, ”Bischoff said. “Dick Ebersol was being interviewed about what he was going to do to improve audiences at these Summer Olympics and one of the things I took away was the formula. 

“Ebersol spoke about making sure that you don’t just cover the sport, but that we tell the story, bringing reality to it, creating anticipation in all Olympic sports. I thought, “Well wow, a lot of that applies to what I do. And I had to tweak that formula a little bit and I did and I found a formula that I called 100,000 times “SARSA”. the acronym: Story, Anticipation Reality, Surprise and Action, and throughout my career to varying degrees, certainly in WCW to a large extent because I was in control of my own destiny there for a long time, in TNA once I really started to get involved in booking at all levels then tried to make it in WWE I just wasn’t around long enough to be successful but I always believed that no matter what, I don’t care how the fight changes, how audiences change, how many streaming platforms are coming in, how many people are watching their shit on their phones, I don’t care record because at the heart of why people watch, what they watch on any device they go to watch it on is “history, anticipation, reality, surprise, action.” If you can combine these elements into any content on any platform, regardless of audience generation, you are likely to be very successful. “

He would sit down with a legal pad and jot down notes according to his SARSA method. You can imagine how it works for wrestling plots, but suffice to say some years ago I loosely adopted Eric's interesting method for my RPG's. 

Its not hard and fast. Nor does it need to be done in any order. But this helped me as dedaces past I would sort of brainstorm possibilities for the coming game (on a walk, at the gym, at work during boring moments, etc), take a note linearly here and there ("if the characters do this then this might happen," "these NPC's might be encountered at the tavern and this is some things that might happen depending on PC actions," "characters will get access to a partial dungeon map" etc). But finding a more organized method to help me organize these thoughts and notes better, more concise, has helped immensely. Especially since thinking about game specifics on the job or anywhere else has diminished for me in recent years. So if I only take notes on a game while having some beverages and a little smoke with some tunes on, then this is a way to get them down in a more helpful manner.

SARSA

 STORY - No, not really storygaming with a well written out plot. In the case of RPG's its the overall box within which your campaign or several game arc will take place in. If your setting will be The City State of The Invincible Overlord, where the characters will spend several games exploring the shops and markets at will for the entire group of scenarios, well, there is your story. In my recent story arc the setting was an area near the frontier of the kingdom, a far flung town where chicken farmers produce the best chickens in the kingdom of Tanmoor. The people are well off, but are a kind of grim folk, who I portray with East London accents and say "Bloody" a lot. Like every other word. There is a crypt of a bandit from 200 years ago and some of his men whom the folk of the town are descended from, and of course one or two other locations they might want to look into. An arc like this, just part of an overall campaign, starts with just the seed of an idea (a crypt crawl) and expands. Hey lets put it in the east most part of the kingdom. Lets have a rooster demon involved in there somewhere. And lets have the town in the area be chicken farmers who say "bloody" a lot. That seed of an idea came from the John Cooper Clark poem "Evidently Chickentown." Here it is in part:

 

The bloody view is bloody vile

For bloody miles and bloody miles

The bloody babies bloody cry

The bloody flowers bloody die

The bloody food is bloody muck

The bloody drains are bloody fucked

The colour scheme is bloody brown

Everywhere in chicken town

And that's the seed of the story. And more and more bits to add will come to mind the more you let it simmer. In the last town before Chickentown I had the characters overhear some little girls jump rope and sing lines from the poem to give characters a heads up that unpleasant people may lay ahead. This is all flavor and outline, and the characters will be the ones that make it an actual story with their actions. So in a nutshell you just put together possibilities hung on the skeleton of a story that the characters will fill in for you. Of course, if you like to storygame then I don't judge. It fits here under SARSA.

ACTION - Action is action. Role-play is fine, but action scenes are the meat and potatoes of it all to me. Just enough to please both the combat wonks and the role players. My basic notion is for two major action pieces to occur in every three hour session. At least one of them should be a true combat that involves all or at least most of the characters. But one of the action pieces could be a chase, where various rolls are involved (how fast you are moving, jumping over fences, jumping from roof top to roof top). Any scene that might involve climbing steep surfaces, avoiding hazards, swinging from ropes etc. Anything that has an element of danger and requires rolls be made to fail or succeed. In a game like Call of Cthulhu, or classic Traveller, where death comes easy and you need to have less combat than in D&D, various action ideas that don't have to involve bloodshed can be injected. Perfect for CoC really, especially if you run it a bit pulpy. There are lots of dangers in the world that don't involve guns or tentacles. So in SARSA you just keep in mind that static role-play is fine, but factor in lots of dice rolls and non-combat danger or at least suspense. Fit them in as much as you can. And of course PC's might find some chances for rolls on their own. Thieves pickpocketing at the local market is for sure a chance at multiple actions instances. So jot possibilities down under the "action" column ("players might face a fencing master if they get caught cutting his purse," "there might be lots of nobility at the market today so bigger stakes...but more guards," "there is a wizard convention in town so a chance at magic items, and possible wrath of a magic user, is possible tonight" etc).

 REALITY - Yeah yeah, it ain't real life. But verisimilitude is what to strive for; the reality in context of the setting you are presenting. But trying to keep a mind on basic physics helps make the times when reality is bent stand out more. For instance I like to have things as "normal" as possible, real-world adjacent, so that when big spells go off or I inject something whimsical (silly?) it stands out. My setting is a basic D&D world, fairly mid-magic, but I grew up on things like Judges Guild and Arduin. I just have to throw in batshit monsters or situations based on that experience. But its a sometimes thing. Most of the time my reality is kobolds, orcs, giants, big bugs. That's the reality for my players. But watch out when I've been looking at my old third party materials. The players may briefly be swept out of their reality by encountering Tegel Manor (for 5th ed!), or perhaps a merchant for the pop-up store of The Multiverse Trading Company. Or maybe a dungeon of the Mythic Underworld variety, where the laws of nature don't always apply. But everyday life should be held to the laws of physics we know (up is not down, most animals do not talk, nothing is free, etc). So in this column you jot down parts you want to have a full hold on everyday reality, and the things that might vary from those normal physical laws. And how you will bring that down to reality eventually.

SURPRISE - Twists, turns. Will there be any? Can and old enemy show up in this game? Maybe something the PC's thought of in a certain way will be changed up. Maybe a friend will turn out to be a traitor. Any ideas that might make characters do a double take can go here. 

 ANTICIPATION - I find this very important. Setting things up for the players to look forward to, and how that thing might pan out, or NOT pan out, can go here. Classically in D&D treasure is that thing they look forward to besides the monster combat and exploration. Levelling up is another basic anticipation. But maybe you have other ideas that can set up anticipation. Possibility of promotion from the queen and all the perks what come with? A surprise romantic possibility that will be put on a slow burn (true role players love that). An opportunity for revenge might be on the horizon? But if you do boil it down to treasure, a hint at what might await can get player juices flowing. But also unknown foes. PC's might know an armed force awaits them, but how many? Don't let them know unless they have some scouting tactics. Will this be an easy fight or a party-killer? And not everything has to be a mystery. Knowing a powerful force is ahead that they cannot avoid. That stirs it up. Some fights are over the PC's head, and often they can overcome such. Aid coming in at the last moment can be jotted down in the "surprise" column. Its that real possibility of death that has always been key to anticipation in games. Find ways to keep reminding them. Jot it all down in this column. 

Again, this is just an outline of one method for organizing possibilities you are thinking of that might normally just bounce around in your head, maybe forgotten by game day. Outside of your maps and nuts and bolts notes on dungeon contents and other important adventure notes, SARSA or something like it is a great way to set up a one page set of organized notes to create flavor and list the "mights" and the "maybes." 

 

And...then there was Eldritch Horror

 

It's kind of odd really, to be several games in to a successful D&D campaign with people I first met in the 1st session and to mostly be posting about board games. But it's my current passion. Not just any people to play with (my local besties B and L), and not just any games. All the games I have posted about that I love are games with action, mystery, adventure, and whimsey. 

When I first moved into my new town a few short years ago I looked into local board game meetups. But unfortunately, the gamenuts present had long since moved on from some of the games I loved, and on to others. Games that I didn't find especially inspiring. There was one game where you built different colors of coral. Yawn. Another popular one was Stone Age. I was excited to try it. Mammoths and hunting! But no, turned out it was all worker and resource management, something I find about as exciting as two flies breeding. I gave up on that scene fairly quickly. But I soon met B and L. They were looking to get into D&D and tapped me to run the games. The group went well for a few months, but when it folded for the usual reasons, I decided to try and get them into the board games i wanted to try. B and L already went to a local bar that had over 100 board game free to play, so they were no strangers to them. 

At first, I got them into my old copy of Talisman, and they liked it enough to quickly buy one of the more recent versions. Soon I was buying games I wanted try with them, mostly seen on Will Wheaton's Tabletop show. King of Tokyo, Epic Spell Wars, Dead of Winter, etc.  We played and continue to play the hell out of them. Some others as well. But the one that sat on the shelf since I know them went untouched. It was Eldritch Horror. 

A relative of Arkham Horror. EH was a complicated game, with tons of cards, tokens, and a huge number of fiddley rules to unpack. I was fairly intimidated by it. When I first got it almost three years ago I broke it open and tried a few rounds to learn it, and man, I was baffled. Too much. So it remained stashed away. 

But recently I was like "what the hell." I kept studying on it, and got some info locked into my brain, but the only way to learn it was to actually play it with people, and B and L were up for it. Honestly, just taking the half hour or so to set it up made you learn a lot. Many of the decks involved are identified by artwork, often very similar to different decks, which makes it harder to organize. So far we are maybe three sessions in with it. We devote our entire game day to it, but never seem to finish it. Usually, things look bad and rather than try to hang on with our characters for another hour or so, we pack it in and play some shorter games to end the evening. B and L are fairly competitive, but unless money is involved, I'm about the journey. I don't really care if I win or not. I'm a role player. 

Not to say it isn't fun. It's awesome. It has a lot of role-playing elements that appeal to me. The interesting characters, the different story beats that can happen. It kind of plays like a more epic, international Call of Cthulhu campaign. 

You basically choose of of several Old Ones, including Cthulhu, and build things around that deity. One card deck you actually have to work on to apply to that specific God, organizing it in particular layers. Then your characters travel around the world locations, doing actions (travelling, shopping, etc) and having encounters. As you play gates will appear (during the games turn; the "Mythos Phase"), and monsters as well. It's hilarious, but B and L have almost no Lovecraft experience, so I'm constantly explaining what things are. The Mi Go takes out your brain and fly it to Jupiter or whatever. Hounds of Tindalos come through angles to get at you. Etc. But playing last night a Colour out of Space showed up, and they got excited, having recently seen the Nick Cage movie of that name. We're playing with Shub Niggurath as the deity, and had to keep telling them to mispronounce it because it has an unfortunate similarity to a word we should not say out loud. I kept saying "no, say "Shub Nagrath." I'm serious, did Xenophobic HP Lovecraft purposefully use that unfortunate pronunciation? 

The game play is fun and very deep, so even if you aren't a Lovecraft fan, if you are cool with learning a lot of awkward (yet strangely effective) rules, and are willing to put like 5 hours into a game (some will be a lot shorter just due to bad luck), you might like it. We love it (B and L specifically asked to play it yesterday), but a little goes a long way. So many games to play, so little (generally speaking) time.